


Firefight, Offworld

by Magik (magikfanfic), magikfanfic



Series: Future Adventures of Yorkes and Stein - Avenging Verse [3]
Category: Runaways (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 11:16:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7313017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/Magik, https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shortly after Gert's twenty-fourth birthday, they lose Old Lace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Firefight, Offworld

**Author's Note:**

> The Future Adventures of Yorkes and Stein is not told in chronological order. Have a flashback a long time in the making.

Shortly after Gert's twenty-fourth birthday--Gert's birthday is November 4th, which someone once told him explained everything because it made her a Scorpio and even though she scoffed and rolled her eyes at it, Chase found an astrology website to look at just to see what all the fuss was about and then spent the next week pointing out everything she did that fit until the ice from her glare was palpable--they lose Old Lace (firefight, offworld). All Gert says once they're back home is that she has a headache. She isn’t crying. Chase has known her for twenty-four years, and the number of times that he has seen her cry can be counted on one hand. She's just lost something that is, arguably, the most important creature in her universe, and her eyes are dry. 

She just says that she has a headache and slips away into another room of yet another one of the seemingly endless secret hideouts their parents scattered across the globe. Finding them has become an elaborate game of hide and seek for them, something they do to pass the time and use to challenge each other with when something bigger isn’t happening, but he’s not really focused on that right now. Chase watches her walk down the hall and thinks about how Gert never has a headache, how she never uses it to cover up something else that she doesn't want to say. She's not the type of girl to do that. Some girls might say, "Not tonight, honey, I have a headache." Gert says, "Not tonight. I'm trying to solve the world's energy crisis. You can either help me or go away." with her eyes on him saying loads more, talking about how despite the fact that he thinks he's a moron, the apple might have fallen far enough from the tree, but it's still an apple from that tree so, think, Chase, think.

So he'll go away and tinker and think. Only to come back and show her what he's done, what he's thought up. He'll watch the way the slow grin spreads across her face while he explains it. The grin that tells him that she knew he would figure it out all along. With a solution firmly in place there's no need for anyone to have a headache. There’s only time for more problem solving and the inevitable, eventual celebration, which isn’t complete until they’ve managed to knock something off of a table or counter or, hell, the top of a bookshelf once while Gert breaks out into peals of uncharacteristically joyful laughter such that he promises himself he’s going to make her do that more often because, goddamn, does it make his heart pound even harder for her than usual.

So her walking away from him, her shutting herself behind a door, her saying she has a headache, none of that adds up. Chase just stands there, looking down the hall at where she disappeared, and he can feel his heart imploding like a black hole, sucking everything inside of it until his entire chest feels hollowed out. It wasn’t like this when their parents and that bastard Alex died or when they thought they died that first time so long ago. Then the only thing he could feel was relieved. Relieved that it was all finally over. That his shitheel of a dad was never going to be able to be able to raise a hand to him ever again while his mother just watched and never said a word. Even now he doesn’t really miss them, not his parents. If he misses any of the Pride, it’s actually Gert’s mom and dad who always gave off a cool, art collector vibe. Yeah, they turned out to be time traveling thieves involved in murderous, world conquering plots, but it was also really clear that they fucking loved their hardheaded, independent, loud daughter. No, it wasn’t just that they loved her; they were proud of her, and how much she was herself rather than folding and fitting into what anyone else wanted her to be. Anyone who looked at the Yorkes could see that, and he had been jealous of it. 

But he hadn’t known them well enough to mourn them, and there was no way in hell that Gert would ever let herself go down that road even though he knew with every fiber of his being that she did miss them. At least a little. At least in some small Gert way of hers that maybe only he, Molly, Karo and Nico would ever be able to see. It was the way her hand would go still sometimes when she was in the middle of a drum solo or the absentminded way that her hand would linger on her glasses when she went to push them up her nose. Things like that, things other people wouldn’t even bat an eyelash at, but were still out of place when it came to the very purposefully, planned out motions of the being that was Gert Yorkes. Even the smallest falters in her plans were falters, hesitations that could speak volumes to him even if they didn’t register as whispers to anyone else in the world.

If the loss of Old Lace is like a chasm opening in his chest, threatening to break him apart the way California is predicted to eventually peel away from the rest of America, he cannot even fathom what Gert is feeling right now. If she’s allowing herself to feel anything at all, which is what he’s concerned about most. That she’s gone into that room and just turned off, pushed everything so deep, deep down into one of her logical mind rooms that she’ll freeze over and crack into pieces. When he turns to go down the hall to try and check on her, his legs won’t move. They won’t move an inch, won’t listen to him. They’re just shaking. He doesn’t understand it; they’re strong legs, capable, never failed him before. But they’re shaking and won’t move. 

It takes him too long to realize that he, too, is shaking, a full body shudder that he hadn’t even noticed, and his chest feels tight. Chase wishes Molly was with them; wishes that he and Gert hadn’t decided that this was a job they could do alone without calling in the aid of her Avengers or their family. Molly, with all of her medical training, would know what to do. Actually Molly would just know what to do. Period. Even in the middle of her own grief. Karo would be full of hugs, tea and holding everyone’s hands, physically binding them back together again even as she cried and mourned. And Nico wouldn’t have any idea of what to do, not really, but she wouldn’t move until she was damn sure that she had done everything she could. Vic would be pacing and trying to distract them somehow, all frenetic movements and inappropriate nerd speak. And any of that would have been better than him being here with his chest caving in, alone.

No, he thinks, they should have taken someone, anyone with them. Somehow Chase has sunk to the floor, still shaking, and now there are hot tears running down his cheeks. Old Lace might have been genetically coded for Gert, but she was a part of all of them, especially him. Hell, he has lost count of the number of times the dinosaur had taken his side. She was as much a piece of him as Gert was, and losing her reminds him of that terrible, awful, very bad moment that alternate, future Gert had time traveled and died in his arms. Now there is one less being alive in the universe who thinks his girlfriend is worth sacrificing everything in order to save. He’s not enough to protect her all by himself. Chase has a lot of fears under his swagger and constant stream of words. Not being enough is a big one.

Time crawls and rushes and pitches forward in weird, random spurts that make him think this must be like what the Yorkes felt as they whizzed from decade to decade, stealing whatever their hearts desired. Somewhere along the way the shaking turns into muted sobbing, a trick he learned years ago. The only thing his father liked less than his disappointment jock of a son was his crying disappointment jock of a son. This is not about him thinking Gert will think less of him if she finds him crying and more because this isn’t his hurt; this is her hurt. He’s not willing to take that away from her. He’s supposed to be the strong one; he’s supposed to be the protector. Yeah, she might think it’s dumb and neanderthal and such a typical guy move of him to want to be all those things, but it doesn’t take away the fact that it’s what he wants to be. Strong. For her. Instead he’s in the hall, crying, and too shaken to move, to go to her, which is where he should be right now.

Because Gert. Gert whose world and mind and emotions and everything have been intertwined with this dinosaur since she was fifteen has now had that torn away from her. Chase has no idea how to relate to that, but he’s goddamn sure that his pain is never going to measure up. So he’s as quiet as he ever has been before. Maybe too quiet. It might be all the silence that finally draws her out because Chase might no longer be the same guy who talked every single moment of every single day about every passing thought in his head, but he is still normally pretty loud. She chides him in her loving way about that. How he walks hard like every step is about proving something to somebody, making sure everyone knows damn well that he’s there, that he’s real.

“Hey,” she says, voice soft and gentle, so very not Gert that Chase looks up immediately just to make sure it is her. It is. Still with her very dry eyes that pain him more than any amount of tears would. However, she has taken off her glasses, which is strange enough to make his breath hitch in his throat again.

God, he’s an idiot. Not the dumb dumb he used to try and play because that’s what people expected of him because he was big and tough and good at sports but still an idiot nevertheless. “Hey,” he responds, though he has to clear his throat twice and even then the words sound wrong, thick and painful. His head is full of muck from all the crying, and he’s sure there’s snot on his face. There’s that dried up feeling starting behind his eyes that always accompanies long bouts of crying and smacks of dehydration.

When he reaches for her, she hands him tissues and a bottle of water, which makes him panic and think that she will leave him alone in the hall. Once he got to know her, and not just what he thought he knew about her, Chase realized that she was not the cold bitch that most people thought. Yeah, Gert is blunt and methodical and controlled. God, she is the most controlled person he has ever known, especially after. His heart wrenches again because discovering Old Lace was the thing that made Gert’s control lock down hammer tight. She had to. Otherwise things could have gotten. Bad. Only now he’s looking at her, and she seems colder than she should, shut down. “Babe,” his hand goes for her wrist, deftly avoiding what she’s handing him, wanting to touch her, needing the comfort of her touch and aching to be able to comfort her as well. He feels like he’s riding the coattails of her loss, stealing the spotlight.

He does not miss the hesitation in her, the way she stiffens under his touch. She blinks rapidly, and Chase has no idea whether it’s because she’s trying to see better or because the tears are finally rising. “Gert.” He swallows the lump in his throat, fingers so tender around her wrist, wanting to pull her to him but not daring to. He can barely stand to breathe right now. He doesn’t trust his legs, barely trusts his voice. The only thing in the whole wide world that he trusts implicitly at the moment is standing there, aloof and cold, breaking his heart even more, which he wasn’t sure was possible considering how the loss of Old Lace has shattered him.

Gert’s keening cry replays in his mind. That moment when the connection that had been a part of her life for almost a decade was snapped, silenced forever. Never in his life has he heard her make a noise like that, seen her look like a lost child like that. Not even when she was a child had Gert looked so helpless and fragile, as though everything within had been lost. It had lasted for a handful of seconds, her gasping on the floor and him needing to get to her but having to pilot the goddamn spaceship because they had to go alone. Them against the world. Just the three of them.

Just the two of them.

Their pride. Always betraying them.

By the time they were clear and autopilot was on, Gert was in one of the cabin chairs, a tablet on her knees, fingers flying across the on screen keyboard. She wouldn’t look at him or talk to him the entire flight home. Chase had let her be alone and quiet and without him even though it hurt him. Tragedy made him clingy and twitching, desperate for human contact and the promise of solidity. It made Gert dive headlong into anything but thinking about what had happened.

“Gert, please,” he tries again, never once having released her, scared that if he lets go she’ll just fade away into the air. She’s too good to be true, his girl, especially for him, and even after all these years that still scares him, too. That one day she’ll wake up and figure that out, leave him all alone.

Something shift inside of her. He can tell the almost the moment before she can that she’s going to sit down next to him, which she does on his left side, placing the tissues and water bottle gently on his lap even as she molds into his side. Chase has his arm around her shoulders before he can even think. It’s instinctual to hold her even though he knows that she’s not always keen on it. Normally he checks with her to make sure, but he can’t right now. He can’t not touch her to reassure himself that she’s there. He hopes that it reassures them both, but he doesn’t know what Gert’s going through and she hasn’t said.

“I have a headache,” she repeats with this slight catch in her voice that only Chase would get. That’s when he understands. He swears he’s so dim sometimes. So dense and wrapped up in Chaseness, in brash and bold and loud and obvious that the tiny little clues his brilliant girlfriend leaves for him get so overlooked. 

Of course her head hurts because Old Lace died there. Any ounce of pain would have radiated through Gert’s mind and body. Not just that. The void in her quicksilver mind probably feels incomprehensible. Much like the one he still seems to be feeling in his chest. Nothing can ever just be physical for Gert. It’s always cerebral as well. Hell, it’s mostly cerebral and this time is no exception. 

She leans her head against his chest and is quiet and stiller than normal. He has, thankfully, stopped crying at this point although he feels like it’s going to well up and overtake him again as he watches her face, her unfocused eyes and the set line of her mouth. But it’s Gert so she has to focus on something, and he realizes that she’s breathing in a steady, forced way that is slowing his heart so it won’t beat right out of his chest. Her whole world crumbling down, and she’s still just looking out for him.

“Love, I am so sorry,” he breaths, hand sliding lower, grazing her back. Somewhere between the time she walked away and the time she came back to him, she took her uniform off and changed into normal clothes. Layers. It’s always layers with Gert. She’s never happy with just one thing. If there’s a shirt, there’s an undershirt. If there’s a skirt there’s leggings beneath it. Chase still hasn’t worked out whether it’s just her preparedness leaking out into everything or if it’s another physical barrier between herself and the rest of the world. Or if it’s just teenage body shame bleeding into the adult world. So many scars from childhood marked on them all. He needs to touch her skin, to remind them both how real they still are. Gert has books and ideas and the laws of the physical world for solidity; Chase has Gert with her pale skin, too soft and too round to be a superhero but perfect for it just the same. When his fingers finally touch the small of her back, just the barest whisper of skin against skin he closes his eyes. It’s working. Her breathing slowing his heart, the warm, solid presence of her finally loosening that knot that had wrapped itself completely around him.

She’s humming now, almost tunelessly. It’s no song that he knows, which isn’t hard to do because music is another one of those things that she absorbs like knowledge. Startles everyone, her great passion for music. Startled him too because she was supposed to be bookish and political and into conspiracy theories about every single thing, taking over the world one corrupt organization at a time with just her brain. And she is. She all that, but she’s also an encyclopedic font of information about punk rock in its myriad forms and the British invasion and Vietnam protest music and ska and grunge. It’s not her being hipster and holier than thou with music, either. Gert can find something to praise in almost any form, anything that she hears. Although she’s always pretty quick to point out when the drum part could be better.

All he can do for a moment is look at the top of her head, the contrast between her auburn roots and the garish purple that has always suited her so well. It’ll be time for bleach again soon. Chase kisses the top of her head softly, not wanting to disturb her. She’s still humming and breathing in that controlled, soothing manner. This lack of words from her, however, is starting to scare him because he’s used to her talking, him talking, them talking. That’s the one thing they can both manage to do anytime of day no matter how tired they are or what might have happened. In the end, they can talk through anything. 

“I keep thinking about the time machine.” There is no shake in her voice, but there is also none of that characteristic Gert lilt either, that sarcastic little edge to every word. “I think about the ways to fix it, but none of them will work. None of them are going to be right. So I start again at the beginning. If I can’t go back in time, maybe forward. She,” there is the catch, “was from the future anyway. Except that even if there were records. Even if it was exactly the same It wouldn’t be her. It wouldn’t be Old Lace.”

“So I can’t fix it either way.” There’s an angry, sour note of defeat in his lover’s voice, and Chase knows she hates being beaten, especially at games that she should be able to win. Logic, thinking through problems, coming up with solutions to the most complex things. This is supposed to be her playground, but someone has walled her in and taken the chains off all the swings. “I can’t fucking fix it, and my head hurts. My thoughts make too much noise, but it’s also too quiet. I keep feeling that moment.”

That moment. Chase is pretty sure he knows which one she means. The one that drove her to the ground, pulled that sound from her that he never wants to hear again, the one he would do anything to save her from. That moment Old Lace died.

He has no words for her. Not really. Nothing that will be eloquent or helpful; it will just be him saying things, a bull in a china shop, smashing everything around him. But he also can’t just let her ramble away in pain. This was what he wanted to do, go to her and fix all the things, patch her up, take away the pain. Now he has the chance, but no idea of what do do with her and her dry eyes, her hurting head that is too long and too silent all at the same time. At the same time, though, he has to try. He always tries; she never holds it against him too much when he’s wrong. Hopefully that trend will continue.

“Remember when you died.”

“That wasn’t me.” Her voice is a flat tone that almost makes him stop right there.

“It was for me. It didn’t matter if it was alternate, future you. It was still you. She looked like you and smelled like you and felt like you. It was a nightmare playing out right there in front of me only I wasn’t asleep. I was awake, and I could touch it.”

He can tell from the sigh that Gert doesn’t understood where he is going with all of this, but that she is too tired, too done with the day to leave. “Chase.” Sometimes she says his name instead of please, and he has learned what each and every iteration of it means over the years whether it’s “please do that again” or “please, for the love of whatever you hold holy, stop doing that before I have to kill you”, he knows each and everyone of them. This is along the lines of “please, I love you, but I cannot do this right now.” And he knows. He knows she is tired and breaking and done, but he had not gotten to his point yet.

He holds her tighter, fingers tracing the skin on her back in small, light circles. She is real, and she is there. She is real, and she is still his to have and hold. “I want to say I know, but I don’t. I don’t know. I don’t know how you feel. I can only think back to the worst thing that ever happened to me and compare it to that. And even then, you were still here. She wasn’t. But I wasn’t going to lose you like that. So.” He isn’t helping. And, really, how could he even help with the rambling. “I don’t know, babe. Do you want me to call Molly?” Molly is always the first choice because he knows that she’s the one who is the most family for both of them.

Somehow, in a way that he doesn’t understand, that’s the breaking point. The mere mention of Molly sets Gert to crying. Not just her normal quiet, tears slipping down the face crying that he has seen occasionally when she thinks no one is watching, but body shaking, gasping sobs that make his stomach clench and his heart leap to his throat, beating a million miles an hour. He wants someone to punch, but there’s no one he can right now.

All he can do is gather her up more firmly in his arms, surround her like a wall that nothing can get through as she weeps, give her solace and solidity. Chase strokes her hair and rubs her back and murmurers words that don’t even register to him. It’s just random, mindless babbling because he knows that the sound of words might calm her, even though he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s saying. “Sorry” comes out a lot and “I love you” and “I’d fix it if I could.” It’s not the words that matter, not really, so much as the intention behind them. And, when it comes to Gert, Chase’s intentions have been for the best since he fell head over heels for her. 

When the sobs have lessened, he opens the water and makes her drink some of it. Her eyes find his, and he can see her there, young and vulnerable and so tired. She’s so tired of fighting and running; they have been doing both for so very long. The whole time she has acted flippantly, acted like it can all be shouldered effortlessly because it has to be done when it has really been a burden, a Herculean feat. One that might have been easier because she always had Old Lace to lean on. If a feeling was too big, if a thought was too much, if a pain hurt everything, she could share it without even needing to feel vulnerable. 

“I can’t tell Molly,” she finally says, and her voice breaks as though the sobs are going to start all over again. They don’t, though, she just looks away from him, down the hall, head tilted to the side. Chase knows that gesture, knows all of her gestures because that’s how Gert communicates what’s actually important. She’s listening for the tap of nails on the floor that will never, ever come. This is when Old Lace would normally bound in, ready and willing to cheer up her master. But that’s all over now. The only thing, the only person Gert has right now is him.

He’s been hers completely since the day she saved his life, breathed air into his lungs, kissed him back. Gert, he realizes, was always precariously balanced between him and Old Lace. Not because she didn’t love him, but because it was just the way her mind was setup, had to be setup. The existence of Old Lace meant that she could remain just a little bit removed from him in case something went south. Part of her was always other, safe.

Now he has to be that safe place. Completely. And Gert needs. Was she afraid of letting him see how much she needed before all of this? Did she think it would scare him away? Chase can’t say, and he’s not going to ask. That’s not what she needs. She doesn’t need him trying to figure out all the little things right now. She needs. Safety and comfort and the knowledge that there is something, someone in the world not lying, not holding things back, not a potential conspiracy. Her brain is her greatest asset, and her biggest weakness all wrapped up into one.

“I’ll tell her,” he says. There is no shake to his voice now. He hurts. Oh, he aches. For the loss of his friend, and in commiseration with Gert. But Chase pushes all of that aside. “You’re not alone. I know your head is big and lonely. I know it probably hurts because you felt it. I know it all fucking sucks, and it will for a while. But I’m here. You’re not alone. I’ll be here for you if you need. Just tell me what to do.”

Gert looks at him, wet eyes and streaked face, hair a tangle, and he knows that she’s searching his own eyes, his expression for a hesitation, a flaw. There can be none. Not right now. Not under that scrutiny. He holds his ground, and she relaxes into him. “Chase,” she says, the “I love you” version of his name, and then, “just hold me. A little longer.”

And he does. And he will. For as long as she needs. Until her head has stopped hurting, and they can get off the floor and pick up all the pieces. Or not. He’ll hold her forever if she’ll let him.


End file.
